Sue Gray: Partygate sleuth who became Starmer’s embattled chief of staff
She continued to feature in the headlines after taking on the party political job and eventually quit over fears she was ‘becoming a distraction’.
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Your support makes all the difference.Sue Gray first made headlines as the investigator of lockdown-busting parties in Boris Johnson’s government, with civil service impartiality later thrown into question amid Tory criticism of her move to quit the Cabinet Office and join Labour as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff.
The Whitehall veteran continued to feature in the news after taking on the party political job – with leaked disclosures revealing the 67-year-old earned more than the Prime Minister and reports of a power struggle within Downing Street between her and other aides – leading to her eventual resignation in October over her fears she was “becoming a distraction” to Sir Keir’s Government.
Ms Gray was set to take up a new role as envoy to the nations and regions after a break from Government but No 10 announced a month after her resignation that she had decided not to take up the role.
Thrust into the limelight when she took over the probe into coronavirus rule-breaking at No 10 in 2021, Ms Gray went from an influential but little-known arbiter of conduct in government to a household name within months.
She stepped in to lead the investigation after then-cabinet secretary Simon Case – her boss – recused himself following allegations that his own office held a Christmas event amid a lockdown.
“Waiting for Sue Gray” became a well-known refrain as the nation braced itself for her highly-anticipated report.
An initial dossier, published in January 2022, included several strong criticisms of Downing Street’s drinking culture, but was short on details about the parties as it was hampered by an investigation launched by the Metropolitan Police.
But her full report in May 2022 proved to be a bombshell. It detailed events at which officials drank so much they were sick, sang karaoke, became involved in altercations and abused security and cleaning staff at a time when millions of people across the country were unable to see friends and family.
She criticised “failures of leadership and judgment” in No 10 and said “the senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility”.
She knows everything that anyone has ever done wrong
Six weeks later, Mr Johnson was forced out of office by his own cabinet and Conservative MPs.
In March last year, Ms Gray was embroiled in controversy when Mr Johnson and his allies furiously reacted to the news that she was planning to become Sir Keir’s chief of staff.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said on GB News that it was “hard not to feel that she has been rewarded and offered a plum job for effectively destroying a prime minister and creating a coup”.
She was cleared to start in the role in September 2023, following a six-month cooling off period from when she quit as a senior civil servant, after a review by Whitehall’s anti-corruption watchdog – although a separate Cabinet Office inquiry concluded she broke the civil service code due to her contact with Labour ahead of her resignation.
A row within Government emerged in September this year after leaked disclosures revealed Ms Gray received a pay rise after the election which meant she earned more than Sir Keir. The BBC reported she was given a salary of £170,000, based on a leak, which put her earnings at around £3,000 more than the Prime Minister’s.
In early October, Ms Gray quit as Downing Street chief of staff, explaining: “In recent weeks it has become clear to me that intense commentary around my position risked becoming a distraction to the Government’s vital work of change.”
At the same time, it was said she would take up a new role as envoy to the Council of the Nations and Regions but she missed the inaugural meeting of the council, sparking confusion as to when she was due to start, with No 10 announcing a month later that she had decided not to take up the position.
In her former role as director-general of propriety and ethics in the Cabinet Office from 2012 to 2018, she is said to have overseen cabinet reshuffles, served as a guiding hand in compiling honours lists, and even signed off political memoirs before their publication.
The diplomacy skills required for such a sensitive role were honed in a location far removed from Whitehall, when Ms Gray and her country and western singer husband Bill Conlon bought and ran a pub in Newry, Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles in the late 1980s.
During that time, Ms Gray once faced down IRA paramilitaries who attempted to hijack her car, bluntly refusing to exit her vehicle when they ordered her to do so, friends told the Belfast Telegraph.
Reportedly dubbed “deputy God” by some in the civil service, Ms Gray, who is said to be a cat lover, was no stranger to a standards investigation, having led two previous reviews into the behaviour of cabinet ministers.
Polly Mackenzie, who served as policy director in the Cabinet Office under former deputy prime minister Sir Nick Clegg, said Ms Gray knew what holding the power to end careers felt like.
“She knows everything that anyone has ever done wrong,” the chief executive of think tank Demos told BBC Radio 4 for a profile of the civil servant.
“So that means when it comes to decisions that might make or break a political career, she can be incredibly powerful.”
Ms Gray’s reviews of senior cabinet ministerial behaviour in the past have led to high-profile sackings and resignations.
Former prime minister Theresa May tasked her with investigating her close ally Damian Green, over allegations that he had lied about the presence of pornographic images on his Commons computer.
She also spearheaded the so-called “plebgate” inquiry into claims that then-chief whip Andrew Mitchell insulted police officers on Downing Street.
David Laws, who was a minister in the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government, said David Cameron’s former policy chief, Oliver Letwin, once told him that unless Ms Gray agreed, “things just don’t happen” in Whitehall.
Some critics have suggested she has been influential in blocking freedom of information requests, with former BBC Newsnight journalist Chris Cook reporting in 2015 that she was “notorious for her determination not to leave a document trail” and had assisted departments to “fight disclosures”.
According to her Government biography, Ms Gray started working for the Cabinet Office in the late 1990s following her stint behind the bar in Northern Ireland during a “career break”.
After her time as head of ethics in the Cabinet Office, she served as the permanent secretary of the Department of Finance in Northern Ireland from 2018 to 2021.
She reportedly refused to have a leaving do when she left the Belfast office, to adhere to the lockdown rules.
After May 2021, she was back in the Cabinet Office as second permanent secretary with responsibilities in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.